The following article was written for a competition in Fiji on the "idea of home". While the article was not specially recognized, it was cathartic for me to write. It was written in less than two hours, on a busy day of teaching. But I enjoyed talking about a sense of displacement.
The events mentioned here are real both in factual sense and in the feelings of alienness and unity they evoked in me. I have had to make difficult decisions that impacted my career and personal life, because I wanted a sense of "familiarity", which I find it harder and harder to achieve. Movement has been the mantra for me for the last two decades. I remember a response to our English teacher's question, "can you make a sentence out of a word 'Oblige" so I know you understand its meaning.
"Circumstances make us oblige".
Well, such is the story for many of us, unplanned, accidental travellers.
The above picture was taken from my apartment on the fifth floor of the PeppermIll on Atherton St., State College, PA
The Smell Of Tulips, The Touch Of Snow
Finally, I had an interview in Auburn, Alabama. I was looking forward to spending half a week in the sun, just as much as the possibility of a new tenure-track job.
My potential would be colleagues had told me that it hardly ever snowed there. Once, fifteen years ago, they had gotten flurries. That it can be so humid, that every summer the water levels in their backyard swimming pools rise instead of dropping. And there is no end to southern hospitality. Sweet potato pies and pecan pies usually show up at your doorsteps, invitations to dinners and teas never stop. And Christmas is never very cold, so Santa shares his presence more generously than in the north. This, was to be a great piece of news to someone who had spent eleven years in Pennsylvania, where you can expect anywhere from 15-30 inches of snow every year.
I was used to dressing in five layers of clothing, scalding showers to take away the cold that had seeped in my bones, and between October and March I hardly ever left home without a woolen hat, thick gloves, and snow shoes.
Home, I could never define it.
I grew up in India, and left just as I was stepping out of teens, a couple of years in Africa, a few months back in India and then the rest of the time I had been in the US. By then I had spent thirteen years in the US and over a decade and half outside of India. In those fifteen years, I had moved more than twenty times, between continents, within countries, inside one apartment or dorm building, from one apartment or dorm to another.
A far cry from how I spent my formative years. In the same house where my father came as a young boy, after my grandfather moved to India.
A move, no matter for how short a distance, I had learnt, was a move, was a move, was a move. Everything changed when I moved. The route I took to work, the people I saw on the way, the view from my window, the angle my computer was placed in my always-small bedroom, where my pencil stand stood, where I stored three boxes of letters and cards, and also where I stored my folded boxes, just in case life called for yet another move. So I knew not home. I knew familiarity, I knew smells that made me nostalgic, I knew music that reminded me of places, and I knew bus schedules that took me home. I did not own a car for the longest time, so I knew places by what means of transportation was most convenient for me, in which place, buses, cabs, subways, bicycle and the most reliable---walking.
This job in Auburn, Alabama would provide everything. A resting place, a right sized community, time to research rather than spend it on job applications, a shovel free winter, and plenty of sun to help my body manufacture vitamin D. But for some reason, my heart felt out of place when I landed in the town. The beautiful campus, where even in March the ground was visible, as opposed to being covered with snow and slush, did little to engage me. The news that one year’s parking in Auburn will cost me the same as I pay for a month in State College, Pennsylvania went pale on my heart and ears. There was a sense of guilt as I craved food from the Oriental buffet when I was being treated by my potential colleagues, to expensive Italian meals.
Instead of looking like the convalescents that they do in Pennsylvania, trees in the month of March, in Alabama were lush and green. The air was fresh, gentle and rightly warm. My experience had told me that with time I would make friends, and so on any given day, I will be surrounded by enough people on the streets who know my name. But my heart rattled, as I looked at the unfamiliar names of streets. My mind shivered at the thought of hot and humid summers.
I had wanted a regular job and stability for so long. I knew I did well in the interview, I knew I had a chance of being offered the job. The people at the University were nice and friendly, and they promised me freedom in my work. The job was all that I needed at the time to fix everything that was not right.
State College, on the other hand was the town where I did my doctorate and so according to the tradition, I could not get a long-standing position at the university. Not unless I spent a considerable amount of time establishing myself as a scholar elsewhere. The same philosophy that says separation from the parent is a pre-requisite for the maturation of an individual.
It was snowing in State College the day I got back from my interview. “Oh, back to poopville!!” the words echoed in my mind, as a friend had uttered them a year ago when we returned from a week in Georgia. Only, I had my nose pressed against the glass door at the airport as I watched the snowfall, while we waited for our luggage. And I wondered how a girl raised in Delhi, India learns to crave snow.
“What are you doing here?” asked Faizal, the gentleman who ran a shuttle service between town and airport.
“Oh, just got back, heading home.”
“Got a booking?” he asked with concern.
“No, thought I would call for a cab, but no one is answering, do you have a seat?” Due to lack of time I had forgotten to make a booking with Faizal, which I usually did.
“Yeah, its snowing so getting a cab will be difficult” and he headed towards my bags “Come, we will take you. We are booked, but you don’t take much space.”
I smiled, I neither needed to ask him how much it would cost me, nor did he need to know where I lived.
Faizal was from Ethiopia. He had studied aeronautical engineering but later in life decided to run a stable business that allowed him to live in a small town with his family. We had had many conversations during our twenty-minute rides to and from the airport. Even though I had never met his family, I knew their names and what they did.
Faizal brought the shuttle to the backdoor, from where the elevator was easy to access. We exchanged smiles and parted.
As I entered, the building, Vince the building caretaker asked in his gentle voice if he could give me a hand. I nodded. “We fixed the faucet while you were gone. & Liz has your mail, I think you got a package.”
Thanks.
A week later, I was told that I got the job. Happy as I was, I was afraid to leave this town I had known for about four years.
After the contracts were mailed and signed, I started to mentally prepare myself to leave State College, otherwise known as Happy Valley. Since leaving India more than a decade ago, this was the only town where I had had one apartment for four straight years. I had watched trees change colors through my window, had cooked dinners for friends, earned my doctorate, and fell asleep on my second hand couch when I was too tired to reach my bed, only six feet away.
A few days later my new employees emailed with a few changes in the contract that would affect both salary and job description. They needed my answer again on the newly changed contract.
Auburn would mean long-term job security.
To help me decide, I went for a long walk.
Although early April we were expecting some snow showers. It was a partially sunny day. After the walk, still undecided, I sat on a two-feet mound of frozen snow that showed some signs of melting. My head close to my chest, I was breathing heavily. My heart was in pieces.
Suddenly, a cold breeze brought me a chill. I looked up a few feet away from me. Newly sprung tulips were waltzing with the breeze.
“Got your package?” I looked around to see the mailman wave at me. I nodded. I smiled. And I felt that the bone chilling breeze, of a fresh April afternoon, somehow had put my heart together. It rattled no more, and was settled in its pericardial cage. Blood flowed to and fro.
With a pen, I gently carved ‘tulips’ in the snow mound below me. And smiled because I had just been given a chance to smell the tulips for one more year.
